Surfactants: a survey of short-term genotoxicity testing.

The available results for tests on over 200 surfactants in nine short-term genotoxicity assay systems were reviewed. These tests included the Salmonella/microsome mutation assay, bacterial DNA repair tests, mitotic recombination in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the mouse lymphoma cell-mutation assay, unscheduled DNA synthesis and sister chromatid exchange assays in mammalian cells, mammalian chromosome damage tests in vitro and in vivo, the dominant lethal test in rodents, and mammalian cell-transformation tests. The collected data cover all four major classes of surfactants: anionic, cationic, nonionic and amphoteric. The results of these genotoxicity tests were overwhelmingly negative. Although there were occasional positive results in bacterial or cell-transformation systems, the testing performed to date indicates that surfactants have negligible potential to cause genetic damage. The available data also indicate that none of the assays were incompatible with testing surfactants for genotoxicity.